Category Archives: links

“How I Discovered I am White” by Janelle Hanchett: “I realized the reason I had never thought about race was because I was of the privileged one, because I didn’t have to, NOT BECAUSE RACIAL DISPARITY DIDN’T EXIST. I didn’t have to think about race because I was having a fundamentally different life experience than people of color. But I could ignore them, because of my privilege.”

“Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.” — G.D. Anderson

WARNING: HERE THERE BE PUPPIES. As discussed a bit on Monday, the 2015 Hugos just keep getting worse. I would say that we’ve hit rock bottom at this point, but I’m pretty sure that’s not actually true. At any rate, here’s the gross message from Tom Doherty (plus almost 500 comments, almost completely unmoderated, BEWARE). Also responses from: Chuck Wendig, Kameron Hurley, Natalie Luhrs, and Brenna Clarke Gray.

“Over the past few years I’ve become increasingly interested in making sense of the circumstances that allow people to take a stance against or for something, both in stories and in life. I’ve been thinking a lot about activism and exhaustion and hope. I don’t think bravery as an individual character trait accounts for much; instead I’ve come to believe that, as Dais put it, we draw strength from the knowledge that we’re not alone, that we have more friends than we imagined.” This something I’ve also been thinking about in the past few years, and Ana puts it perfectly in this post.

As previously discussed, I’m a big fan of the Bullet Journal method, and Kelly has a great post about how she uses hers. I love reading about different adaptations and processes.

Also from Kelly, this Book Riot post about the problems with touting free ebooks as a solution to literacy challenges is 100% on point. “While this initiative saves the publisher on the cost of printing and distributing a physical book, it in no way allows poorer kids — those who are most in need and most likely to benefit from this kind of access — access to them.”

Shannon Hale is awesome. “Notice the girls did not boo Thomas or Justice League or cars. Many cheered those things too. But the boys booed Barbe and EAH in unison, loudly, as if it was only natural, expected.” Related, this quote–I haven’t read the entire post yet

Jonathan Crombie, who played Gilbert Blythe in the tv adaptations of the Anne of Green Gables series, died and we all mourned. There were a lot of great posts and remembrances, but I especially liked this essay from The New Yorker.

First, there is one I’ve been working on for the past few days, called “On Libraries.” It was born out of my frustration with some quotes about libraries that don’t reflect the reality I see. Here’s the opening:

Here’s the thing about public libraries: they are so much messier and weirder and funnier than you think.

They are kids throwing up on the brand-new carpet; kids missing the toilet entirely; mysterious substances smeared on the covers of books, on the pages, on the inside of DVD cases. They are a full bag of poop tied shut and shoved into the book drop. They are left behind trash and bedbugs crawling out of books and used condoms in the bathroom trash.

– The ongoing messy discussions of sexism & associated issues in YA makes me tired & sad & angry. Several friends have written good responses, including Jenny’s “Why I’m Not ‘Good People’” and Brandy’s “Twitter Turf Wars and Blocking of Criticism”. I also recommend Sarah McCarry’s post here and Ellen Oh’s Storify. There’s lots more to it, and I hope that it leads to productive discussions but at this point I don’t have much hope for that. (It’s probably clear that I’m not supporting Andrew Smith, and I’m still mulling over whether to try to talk about that here.) I’m not even engaging with the horrifically misguided Telegraph article that claims that people voluntarily choosing to not read books by white men for a year “has the beginnings of something altogether more sinister” but yes, that happened too. This has been a wild couple of weeks. Anne Ursu also rounded up several examples from ONE WEEK that highlight why women are angry about these issues.

– However, Preeti Chhibber started a great hashtag called #womeninfiction, which really took off Saturday night. You can read about it and see some of the tweets here.

– Kelly Jensen at Stacked Books is also running a 2 week series called “About the Girls.” The posts so far have been excellent and thought-provoking.

– This is a nice allegory for consent. Of course, this being the internet, there are a number of commenters attempting to go, “But in THIS circumstance, forcing tea on someone is totally justified!!” which I think proves the original point more than anything else.

– Kate Elliott wrote a magnificent post about writing women as human beings. The whole thing is definitely worth reading, but the ending is especially great: “In a narrative that you write and which you encompass the whole of, there can be no “them.” If there is you have already lost the battle because you are relegating characters you feel uncomfortable writing to a lesser, inferior, not-fully-human state, as if they are people who vaguely resemble you in having arms and legs and heads but are otherwise aliens. People are not aliens. They are people. Treat all your characters as people. It’s that simple. It’s that hard.”

– Shannon Hale has a really important post about school author visits and gender. This right here, this is the problem: “I talk about books and writing, reading, rejections and moving through them, how to come up with story ideas. But because I’m a woman, because some of my books have pictures of girls on the cover, because some of my books have “princess” in the title, I’m stamped as “for girls only.” However, the male writers who have boys on their covers speak to the entire school.”